Jerome David Salinger vies with Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes for the title of world's most famous recluse.

The author of The Catcher in the Rye turned his back on the public in 1953, two years after the novel's release, and ceased offering his work for publication in 1965. Over his almost 50 years of silence rumours abounded about him and he was besieged in his home by journalists and fans.

Harper Lee

To Kill A Mockingbird sold more than 10 million copies but Harper Lee disappeared from public life for more than four decades. In a strange twist, aged 79, she emerged from her home in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama, to give an interview to the New York Times.

In the interview, she talked about how, every year, she quietly attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to attend a high-school essay-writing contest based on Lee's classic. She posed for pictures at the annual lunch for the winners held in the president's mansion on the campus. She said: "Students always see new things in it [To Kill A Mockingbird] and the way they relate it to their lives now is really quite incredible." She then heaped praise upon the organisers of the contest. "What these people have done for me is wonderful."

Thomas Pynchon

The author of Gravity’s Rainbow and the Crying of Lot 49 refused to give interviews or appear in public throughout the 1970s. There were even rumours he was actually J.D. Salinger working under an assumed name. Pynchon’s witty response read simply: “Not bad. Keep trying.”

Pynchon was tracked down by CNN in a phone interview in 1997 and said: "My belief is that ‘recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, ‘doesn't like to talk to reporters.'”

Even when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, the Irish playwright and poet declined an invitation to travel to Stockholm to pick up the award because he wanted to avoid giving a public speech.

The author of Waiting For Godot was honoured in a centenary celebration in Dublin in 2006, his nephew Edward, who was standing outside his uncle's former lodgings in Trinity College at a birthday celebration in his honour, admitted that Beckett "would not have come within a million miles" of the place.

Emily Dickinson

One of America’s greatest poets rarely left her house or even her bedroom. She grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and after attending a nearby college, returned to her parents’ home until her death in 1886. She would only speak to visitors from behind her closed front door.

Cormac McCarthy

The author of The Road and All The Pretty Horses lives quietly somewhere in New Mexico. For many years, no one in the literary community knew what he looked like as he never gave interviews. McCarthy even neglected to show at a literary banquet held in his honor. He made an unexpected appearance at the Academy Awards when No Country For Old Men, based on his book, won Best Picture, and in 2007 he shocked the literary community by appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show after she selected The Road for her book club. Since then, though, he has again dropped off of the map.